LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
CAMPOut: The rain in Thpain could hardly be exthplained... |
by Fay Jacobs |
Despite weather more like a Spanish January than April-May, our recent Mediterranean cruise was still a dream come true. Okay, there were days it was a very wet dream, but nonetheless it was one heck of an adventure.
Our intrepid foursome started in Barcelonaor Bar-tha-lona, as the natives say. Apparently the king of the original Catalan provinth had a little lithp, so his subjects began pronounthing things that waya tale I happily choose to believeand we fell in love with the huge city (thity? O.K, I'll stop now). The architecture was gaudy (literally) as it was designed by architect Antoni Gaudi. His notoriously loopy designs of wavy, undulating apartment buildings, a surreal, controversial and unfinished cathedral and tile-encrusted edifices are all over town and a major reason people visit the city. His stuff is positively shocking today, so I imagine that in 1912 they thought he should be locked up. Standing in Barcelona's gothic quarter, built and bustling long before Columbus ever thought of discovering St. Croix or whatever, we felt humbled by history; also by Barcelona's frantic energy and style-conscious population. And forget about being late to dinner. It's not possible in Barcelona. The Early Bird Special is 8-10:30 p.m. We had Paella and Sangria on Fire Island time every night. This is the third trip Bonnie and I have taken with our buds Larry and Robert. Larry is positively the best trip planner and guide ever, but you have to be quick to keep up. He had us hustling all over Barcelona for three marathon days of sightseeing. A highlight was standing in the old town square to see the Sunday afternoon Sardona, a Catalon folk dance. Having been banned under the dictatorial regime of Franco, mid-twentieth century, the Sardona is now danced every Saturday by spontaneous hoards of peopleyoung and old, friends and strangerscoming together to join hands and celebrate their heritage and freedom. We felt privileged to share the moment. Next we boarded a cruise ship in Barcelona Harbor and sailed the Mediterranean. But first we had to suffer the indignities of the mandatory life boat drill. We were instructed to dress warmly, don our life jackets and meet at our Muster station on Deck 5. Some folks chose to put warm clothes over their life vests for the Quasimoto look. The rest of us just stood by, swaddled in rescue-me orange, waiting for Barbara Stanwyck or Clifton Webb to run by (I'll never understand why Kate and Leo replaced our team for the revival). What they should have prepared us for was the danger of exploding. Not the boat. Us. If you've never been on a cruise, you have no idea how much food it is possible to swallow and not sink the ship all by yourself. Since the four dining rooms were all at the rear of the vessel it defied physics that the liner didn't pitch backward and go down at suppertime. Life aboard ship was grand and amusing. In our furtive foursome, we were positively inconspicuously straight. So it was a great big surprise to the roving ship's photographer when he started to snap the two happy couples at our table and was instructed that the twosomes were not the ones he assumed. I've never seen a papparazi stammer so much. Mercifully, he stalked other passengers after that. I won't try your patience with a complete travelogue but I do have a few highlights to share. In Majorca we toured a fabulous old estate where a guide told us that historically, in Spain, only men could inherit property. However, Majorca had a more equitable system. While women could inherit, they were generally given the inferior land holdingsnot the fertile middle sections of the country, but the arid, worthless oceanfront. Ha-ha. There are lots of wealthy Majorcan women now. On board ship, we had a daily newsletter luring us to various lounges for special cocktails, to the casino to lose money and to the ship's store for nightly specials. I bought the half-price t-shirt with an architectural drawing of the ship on it, but I do question the wisdom of my wearing a shirt advertising an 83.5 foot beam. I guess the newsletter's editors were out on the poop deck when they went to press with the issue announcing "Friends of Bill W." gathering at 5 p.m. in the Horizon Lounge. Martini specials at 6." Oops. The shipboard entertainment was a hoot. I mean how often do you get to hear a man yodel and play the saw at the same time. Okay, so it wasn't The Lion King. But they did get points for chutzpah with the singers crooning from the Broadway version of Titanic followed by a showing of The Perfect Storm as the boat lurched and bobbed across the straits of Gibraltar. Speaking of a piece of the rock, we got to take a cable car up to the top in Gibraltar and the way it looked to me, the damn thing faced back to Spain and not out to Africa as I'd always pictured it. Who knew? As for Africa, it was a huge kick to look across the narrow straight (as opposed to straight but not narrow) and see a whole other continent, rising in the mist like Bali H'ai. We had a gorgeous sunny day and the view from Gibraltar was a stunner. Meanwhile, Spain is still really pissed that the English conquered and kept Gibraltar. In fact, Spain is such a sore loser that it won't let ships travel from Gibraltar directly back into any port in Spainyou have to go to Africa first. While Casablanca, Morocco was one of my most eagerly anticipated destinations I found much there to dislike. The city was dirty, in disrepair and if you didn't like sardines you didn't eat. And it was overtly clear that women don't count. At dozens and dozens of sidewalk restaurants, men sat chatting and drinking, with not one woman in sight anywhere. The women we did see in the street were covered from head to toe despite warm weather. Over at the opulent and impressive new Mosque, our guide proudly showed us where the 80,000 male worshippers could bend down on marble floors and pray, while a few women might be able to be accommodated upstairs, behind tacky screens so the men couldn't even accidentally get a glimpse of them. The whole thing gave me the willies. Today, if Ingrid Bergman showed up to meet Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca she'd have to be dressed like a mummy. I couldn't wait to do a Meryl Streep and get out of Africa. Ah, Seville. Now there's a city. When you close your eyes and think of Spain, it's Seville. White-washed buildings, flower-covered wrought iron balconies, narrow streets and colorful tiles. We had the good fortune to visit on a festival day with people swarming the streets in Flamenco costumes. At the world's largest Gothic structure, we saw where Christopher Columbus mayor may notbe buried and, with one day to see the sights, we followed Larry in what he likened to the running of the bulls (the running of the bull-dykes????). I don't know what I liked best, the architecture, the flowering Bougainvillea spilling over the balconies or the gazpacho. We ended our cruise in Lisbon, Portugal and spent an additional three days in and around that lovely city. We got to see where Vasco de Gamma and Henry the Navigator set off on their adventures, ate octopus salad, drove through the countryside dotted with olive trees, traipsed up and down hills and in and out of churches until we told Larry the Navigator we could walk no more. In between, of course, we shopped, spending escudos, pesetas, espadrilles, qualudes or whatever the heck the money was that day. It was a glorious vacation, but I was ready to come back to begin our Rehoboth summer. But I do miss the luxury of the cruise. It's funny, but when I leave my wet, dirty towel on the bathroom floor in the morning it's still there when I get home from work; When I come in from a busy day and sit down at the table, food doesn't just automatically arrive; and worst of all, when I finish dinner at a fine restaurant they actually expect me to pay with money. Oh, Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Malaga anymore. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 11, No. 6, June 1, 2001. |